Harry worked as a bank clerk, and in his late twenties was aware of a gnawing dissatisfaction with life. He thought it was because he wasn't getting ahead, and he certainly felt that he had little talent for his job.
Day after day he arose at the same hour, fixed his breakfast in his small apartment, took the bus to work, sat at a small desk behind a low iron railing, ate his lunch at the same restaurant, returned home at night to an evening of reading before going to bed.
The monotony of this existence, its lack of creativity, palled on him. He became antisocial and was irritable and resentful to those about him.
Returning home from work one day, he sprinted after a departing bus, slipped, fell under the wheels. Both legs were crushed, had to be amputated. When Harry returned to full consciousness after weeks of hovering near death and learned how the world had tumbled about his shoulders, he exhibited a strange reaction. Instead of being overcome by despair, he actually seemed happy.
When asked about it, he replied, "I don't really know why, but for some reason I feel that now I can really be myself. I've lost part of my physical body, but gained something else, I think."
After Harry was discharged from the hospital, he took a cottage at the beach, where he lived on a small income derived from insurance. He began to write. He sat all day in a chair, propped up before a typewriter, and turned out reams of copy. After a while, some of it was published.
Within three years, he was comfortably augmenting his income. Even more marked than his success as a writer was his transformation as an individual. He was radiant. His clear eyes focused far away as he spoke of what his creativeness meant to him.
"It's religious," he said. "Like praying, I think. It's like being visited each day by a supreme mind that works through you because it needs you to do a particular work. I sit here all day in my little house, apparently all alone, but I must tell you that I feel more needed now than I ever have felt before in my life."
He gestured toward the manuscript scattered around the room. "All this has been done through me. It doesn't matter whether people think it's great or mediocre or even poor. It has been done by a power greater than I am, and this power works through me." The joy on Harry's face was testimony to the tremendous spiritual transformation that had taken place within him.
"I lost everything," he continued, "my job, my health, my legs, but in losing them I found something of far greater importance. I learned that material things, even limbs of the body, are unimportant. The main thing in life is that a man should awaken to his true self and serve that self all his hours. This I have been privileged to do."
He laughed then and showed his humor was still with him. "But I don't recommend that you cut off your legs to do it."
Next: Unlocking the Prison of Self
©2023 by U. S. Andersen. All rights reserved.
Excerpted from the book The Magic in Your Mind ©2023 by U. S. Andersen. Printed with permission from NewWorldLibrary.com.
Before The Law of Attraction or The Secret, there was The Magic in Your Mind by U. S. Andersen …